the storyteller

The Storyteller follows Simon Safi, a Kurdish Iranian actor and writer living in Los Angeles who is on the verge of a professional breakthrough when an unresolved obligation from his past arrives at his doorstep. As Simon navigates the pressures of the film industry, contracts, compromises, and the quiet erosion of authorship, he is forced to confront the parts of his identity he has long kept at arm’s length.

When Kian, a relative fleeing Kurdistan as a refugee, enters Simon’s life, ambition gives way to reckoning. Through their evolving relationship, the story examines immigration not as politics but as lived consequence, revealing how exile, survival, and memory collide inside ordinary domestic spaces.

Set against acting studios, modest apartments, and the machinery of contemporary Hollywood, the screenplay explores what happens when progress demands silence and whether success has meaning if it requires the abandonment of one’s past.

This is a character-driven drama about accountability, inheritance, and the cost of moving forward.

Inspired by personal experience.

WHY NOW

With renewed global attention on Iran and the broader Middle East, The Storyteller arrives at a moment when questions of exile, identity, and displacement are no longer abstract.

The film does not attempt to explain geopolitics. Instead, it focuses on the human consequences that persist beyond headlines, how history follows people into kitchens, living rooms, and quiet conversations long after borders are crossed.

CREATIVE CONTEXT & INTEREST

Stephen Cyrus Sepher is a writer, director, and producer whose work includes Bus 657 (released in the U.S. as Heist), starring Robert De Niro, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Dave Bautista, and Dead on Arrival, which he wrote, directed, and produced for Sony Pictures.

He also served as Executive Producer on Deadlock and Vendetta, and his most recent feature, Wages of Sin, won Best Screenplay at the 2024 Arpa International Film Festival and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and Tubi.

Across his film and digital work, Sepher’s projects have appeared on major platforms including Netflix, Peacock, Hulu, Paramount+, and Starz, and he hosts The Conversation Podcast, which has generated more than 39 million views across platforms.

Director (interest expressed)
Shahram Mokri(Fish & Cat, Careless Crime – Venice, Berlinale selections)

Executive Producer
Barry Navidi(Wilde Salomé, Modi – starring Al Pacino, Jessica Chastain)

Composer (interest expressed)
Nicola Piovani(Academy Award winner – Life Is Beautiful)

The screenplay has been held in high regard by actors including Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and Harvey Keitel.

This page is intended for literary and production consideration only.
Materials available upon request.